What is learned helplessness? Learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try — even when opportunities for change become available.

Learned helplessness has since become a basic principle of behavioral theory, demonstrating that prior learning can result in a drastic change in behaviour and seeking to explain why individuals may accept and remain passive in negative situations despite their clear ability to change them.

Learned helplessness occurs when people or animals feel helpless to avoid negative situations. Martin Seligman first observed learned helplessness when he was doing experiments on dogs. He noticed that the dogs didn’t try to escape the shocks if they had been conditioned to believe that they couldn’t escape.

Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so. For example, a smoker may repeatedly try and fail to quit.

The learned helplessness experiment of 1965 conducted by psychologist Martin Seligman is considered unethical. This experiment was unethical because it was cruel and afflicted painful testing on animals. Animals are living being too and its immoral because its a form of discrimination to use animals for experiments.

We think we’ve found 20 answers to that question with our list of the most unethical experiments in psychology.

• Emma Eckstein.
• Electroshock Therapy on Children.
• Operation Midnight Climax.
• The Monster Study.
• Project MKUltra.
• The Aversion Project.
• Unnecessary Sexual Reassignment.
• Stanford Prison Experiment.

The need for retribution and compensation is found in a famously unethical experiment: the Tuskegee syphilis study. Syphilis was seen as a major health problem in the 1920s, so in 1932, the US Public Health Service and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama began a study to record the natural progression of the disease.

If the participant is likely to object or be distressed once they discover the true nature of the research at debriefing, then the study is unacceptable. If you have gained participants’ informed consent by deception, then they will have agreed to take part without actually knowing what they were consenting to.

Ethics of Harlow’s Study His experiments have been seen as unnecessarily cruel (unethical) and of limited value in attempting to understand the effects of deprivation on human infants. It was clear that the monkeys in this study suffered from emotional harm from being reared in isolation.

Few Participants Were Really Debriefed Milgram’s experiments have long been the source of considerable criticism and controversy. From the get-go, the ethics of his experiments were highly dubious. Participants were subjected to significant psychological and emotional distress.

Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.

8 Famous Social Psychology Experiments

• Robbers Cave Experiment. Adriana Varela Photography / Moment / Getty Images.
• The ‘Violinist in the Metro’ Experiment.
• The Piano Stairs Experiment.
• The Marshmallow Test Experiment.
• The Smoky Room Experiment.
• Carlsberg Social Experiment.
• Halo Effect Experiment.
• False Consensus Experiment.

Focus on a Topic Within a Particular Branch of Psychology

• Prejudice and discrimination (i.e., homophobia, sexism, racism)
• Social cognition.
• Person perception.
• Attitudes.
• Social control and cults.
• Persuasion, propaganda, and marketing.
• Attraction, romance, and love.
• Nonverbal communication.

Debates and Issues in Psychology

• Mind Body Debate. One of the central questions in psychology (and philosophy) concerns the mind/body problem.
• Nature vs. Nurture.
• Reductionism vs. Holism.
• Idiographic vs. Nomothetic.
• Psychology as a Science.
• Free-will vs.
• Animal Research.
• Gender Issues.

All Psychology Topics

• Abortion.
• Addictions.
• ADHD.
• Aging.
• Alzheimer’s.
• Anger.
• Anxiety.
• Autism.

According to the task force report, between 35 percent and 40 percent of psychologists in clinical practice are at risk of being assaulted by a patient at some time during their clinical careers. Most of these assaults do not result in serious injury, but they are emotionally disturbing.